Tessa Stark: Desert Heat

Chapter Forty

Sickness slammed into her like a fist in the stomach, taking her breath and weakening her legs beneath her. What she was thinking...it couldn't be. It just couldn't be. It couldn't...because Peyton would never...do that. Not that. Peyton wasn't...him. She'd spent years of her life running away from even the smallest reminder of...him.

Peyton would not suddenly become the thing she hated most.

It made no sense...

"Ma'am? Detective?" Tiffany's voice fell on her ears...dim and in the distance. "Are you alright? Do you need some water?"

No. She didn't need water. She needed...to be wrong. She needed to be completely and utterly wrong.

And maybe she was wrong. Because she could not hunt up a single reason as to why Peyton would...do that...to Hallie Whitmore. Peyton wasn't the one Nathan Rutherford was kissing in the picture. Peyton couldn't have been the one Nathan dumped in favor of Hallie Whitmore. And Peyton certainly couldn't have killed Etty Montrose.

She simply could not dredge up anything, any reason, that made any kind of sense at all.

Really, how could anything so nonsensical...make sense?

Because if she allowed it to make sense...  She'd have to admit that Peyton, her own sister, had murdered Hallie Whitmore in cold blood....because it couldn't possibly have been Kimber.  And Kimber Prescott had murdered Etty Montrose...because it couldn't possibly have been Peyton.  And though she wasn't clear on why Peyton would kill Hallie Whitmore in the first place, she knew that Etty Montrose had died because the girl had heard Kimber yammering away, had slipped Kimber the note...and thusly had to be silenced.

Peyton and Kimber had been working together, playing off one another...Kimber with her air-headed, ditzy act.  And Peyton...Peyton...

Peyton! Her own goddamned sister! After everything! Everything...

It seemed to sink in on her then...Peyton had killed someone...Peyton had needed to keep her close to make sure she didn't suspect...Peyton had agreed to go with her back to Savannah because she wanted to escape...

Every single word spoken mattered.

Peyton had said...Kimber would probably pout and disappear when it was time to go because she hates goodbyes. Her sister had been making sure that she didn't question it when Kimber was simply...never seen again.

"Detective? Sh-should I...call someone?" Tiffany asked.

Yes. They needed to call someone. The scene needed to be secured...forensics needed to be brought in to collect anything that might stand as evidence... And the salon wasn't the only scene. There were two houses and two vehicles that needed to be locked down and processed...

And there were two women who needed to be arrested.

She suddenly felt her cell phone in her hand, saw herself trying to work the screen...but somehow she wasn't wholly involved in the process. She was pressing the phone to her ear...speaking to someone on the other end, the words an unintelligible jumble in her mind.

She simply couldn't participate with her full awareness because her mind was taken up by the fact that she had to arrest her sister on suspicion of murder. Her own sister. After everything!

Fucking Peyton!

Fucking Peyton...

"Tessa?" a familiar voice came to her through the fog of her thoughts and she glanced toward it, feeling a fresh wave of numbness roll over her. "What are you doing here?